McKibben leads thousands in D.C. pipeline protest

Feb. 17, 2013

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Written by

Wendy Koch

USA Today

From center to right, Bill McKibben, Fiona McRaith, Leah Qusba and Maayan Cohen join a march Sunday from the National Mall to the White House in Washington during a rally on calling on President Barack Obama to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. / Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

“This movement’s been building a long time. One of the things that’s built it is everybody’s desire to give the president the support he needs to block this Keystone pipeline,” said Vermonter Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental activist group, 350.org.

“It’s time for the president to stand up,” he said, describing the pipeline as “one of the largest carbon bombs in history.”

People who came from dozens of states planned to form a “human pipeline” leading to the White House, and hold signs urging President Barack Obama to reject the 1,000-mile-plus Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada through several U.S. states.

Some climate scientists say the production of tar sands, carried by the pipeline, will emit far more greenhouse gases than conventional crude oil. Proponents say it will reduce U.S. dependence on unstable foreign oil sources.

The crowd included senior citizens in wheelchairs, people clad as polar bears, a dad from Indiana cradling his toddler daughter wrapped in blankets, women from a Unitarian church in Corvallis, Ore., and college students including Florida’s Molly Kampmann, who was holding a picture of a pipeline that read “this is why I’m hot.”

Others held placards saying, “Read my lips: no new carbons,” and “We’re in a climate hole: stop digging.” Another, referring to a method for extracting natural gas, said: “Don’t be frackin’ crazy.”

“We’re right in the path of sea level rise,” said Mark Geduldig-Yactrosky, explaining his concern about climate change. He took a bus with a group organized by the Sierra Club in Portsmouth, Va. “We’re a low-lying area. We have rising oceans and subsiding lands. So that personalizes it for us.”

“There’s no time for half measures. ... We have to start leaving carbon in the ground,” McKibben said in pre-rally comments. He said Canadian environmentalists have blocked alternate pipeline routes for transporting tar sands within their country so the Keystone route is developer TransCanada’s last option.

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McKibben, author of The End of Nature and other books, says dozens of environmental and civic groups are converging to create a public movement in favor of fighting climate change. He noted that activists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and civil rights leader Julian Bond, were arrested in Keystone XL protests last week outside the White House, as were 1,238 people in September 2011.

Obama has pledged repeatedly to tackle climate change. In his State of the Union Address, he gave Congress an ultimatum: if lawmakers don’t act, he will. Protesters say they are holding him to his word. They want him to not only reject the pipeline but also set limits on carbon pollution from both new and existing power plants. Last year, the EPA proposed limits only on new plants.

In January 2012, Obama rejected the initial 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Port Arthur, Texas, saying he needed more time for environmental review. Since the project crosses a U.S. border, it needs a permit from the State Department, but Obama has said he’ll make the final call.Calgary-based TransCanada has since broken the project into two parts. It received approval last year from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin construction of the 485-mile, $2.3 billion southern leg of the project from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast. Obama’s pending decision involves the 1,179-mile, $5.3 billion northern leg, from Alberta to Steele City, Neb.

The pressure on Keystone has intensified since Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, who like Obama had rejected the initial route, notified the president last month that he’d approved the revised route through his state. Heineman, a Republican, said it would avoid environmentally sensitive areas and bring economic benefits.

TransCanada President Russ Girling, who hailed Heineman’s reversal, traveled to Washington earlier this month to lobby personally for the project.